From what I understand, Redbox Instant will soon be open to "invite only" customers as a way to slowly ramp up. Do we know if there will be a Roku app at launch ? I have my emails registered at the Rebox Instant page and hope to try it soon.

kenwvt wrote:From what I understand, Redbox Instant will soon be open to "invite only" customers as a way to slowly ramp up. Do we know if there will be a Roku app at launch ? I have my emails registered at the Rebox Instant page and hope to try it soon.

They won't have many users out of the box if that is true as most blu-ray players can't be upgraded to add new channels. My LG player is stuck with what it had a few years ago, doesn't even have Amazon Instant. To me Roku is a no brainer !

nighthawk_md wrote:Is Redbox going to have a better selection of titles than Netflix? Maybe more new releases? I don't see them making many inroads otherwise...

All I've heard is that their offering will be $2 less a month than Netflix's current stream-only plan (a price which analysts have estimated must increase). For an additional $2 you'll get 4 kiosk rentals and for another buck those rentals can be Blu-ray. Most of their content will come from a deals with Epix and Warner; Netflix and Amazon struck deals with both this year as well. Apparently they don't yet have license for Fox and Universal older catalog titles, nor will they feature any television, at least to start, so no, their selection will not be as good as Netflix or Amazon's.

Given that, I'm not sure what their motive for entering the buffet plan streaming market is.

The new service, called Redbox Instant by Verizon, is "targeted squarely at movie lovers," said Shawn Strickland, the chief executive of the joint venture between Redbox parent Coinstar Inc., which is based in Bellevue, Wash., and New York-based Verizon Communications Inc.

The service won't include TV shows when it launches on an invitation-only basis before the end of the year. Video game disc rentals, which cost $2 a night, are also not included in the plan.

While the price and features of the Redbox service are similar to what's offered by Netflix, its library is smaller and focused mainly on the most popular Hollywood fare, which Strickland says are the movies that "really matter in the marketplace."

Redbox kiosks carry the top 200 recent movies from the major studios and rent DVDs out for $1.20 per night and Blu-ray discs for $1.50 per night with the swipe of a credit card. The streaming plan will feature about 5,500 movies from the libraries of Warner Bros. and Epix, which is owned by Paramount Pictures, MGM and Lionsgate.

That means subscribers could stream movies such as "The Hunger Games" over computers and certain connected Blu-ray players and Internet-enabled TVs. For now, video game consoles will not be able to play Redbox streaming titles.

In comparison, Netflix has an estimated 60,000 titles available for streaming on a nearly ubiquitous array of devices and has an unrivalled DVD library with more than 100,000 titles.

That means subscribers could stream movies such as "The Hunger Games"...

So could Netflix and Amazon subs at some point; you can already stream fairly recent big release titles like The Avengers on those services. The question is whether they'll start out with a bunch of recent big theatrical releases which aren't yet available on Netflix and Amazon. Also, will they have HD video? If so, will it be 720p, 1080p or both?

For now, video game consoles will not be able to play Redbox streaming titles.

Big mistake. I don't use my game consoles for streaming but Netflix has recently stated that the single most popular platform for streaming their service is the PS3. Of course, they may not want to deal with any huge number of subs while they're working the kinks out of their new system.

...Netflix has an estimated 60,000 titles available for streaming...

60,000 seems like a gross overestimate of the size of Netflix's streaming library. I don't think that they have more than 15K all told, at least according to their own web API, as used by sites such of FeedFlix, InstantWatcher and TVandMoviesNow.

60,000 seems like a gross overestimate of the size of Netflix's streaming library. I don't think that they have more than 15K all told, at least according to their own web API, as used by sites such of FeedFlix, InstantWatcher and TVandMoviesNow.

60,000 includes individual episodes. They have about 11,000 movies and television series available for streaming.

60,000 seems like a gross overestimate of the size of Netflix's streaming library. I don't think that they have more than 15K all told, at least according to their own web API, as used by sites such of FeedFlix, InstantWatcher and TVandMoviesNow.

60,000 includes individual episodes. They have about 11,000 movies and television series available for streaming.

OK--I suppose that I can believe that. Actually, the Netflix search engines say 14,000+, but they list one title for a series and one for every season. Even so, it's difficult to believe that those extra listings would be 3000.